When “Regenerative” Means Different Things:
A Guide to Regenerative Claims on Food Labels
Version 1.0 — February 9, 2026
This guide explains why food labels that use the word “regenerative” can refer to very different farming practices, standards, and values. It introduces a clear, four‑type framework that helps readers understand the range of regenerative claims now appearing on products in grocery stores and online.
Our goal is to support:
- brands, farmers and producers navigating the evolving regenerative landscape
- certifiers and standard‑setters clarifying their positioning
- policymakers and advocates seeking transparency in the marketplace
- shoppers trying to understand what regenerative claims actually mean
This is a companion to the full scholarly paper, offering the same insights in accessible language for broad public use.
What This Paper Is — and What It Is Not
This paper does not:
- rate or rank certification programs
- evaluate specific brands or products
- endorse particular standards
- judge organizational performance
It does:
- summarize how regenerative claims differ in scope and intent
- explain where labeling ambiguity arises
- highlight why regenerative language often signals different things to different audiences
- support transparent, values‑aligned communication in food systems
Future updates, if any, will be published as new numbered versions.
When “Regenerative” Means Different Things:
Food Labels and Consumer Understanding
Introduction
The term “regenerative” is increasingly used on retail food products to signal environmental and social benefits associated with agricultural production. Yet despite its growing visibility, there is no shared definition of what regenerative agriculture entails, nor consistent agreement about which practices, outcomes, or values regenerative claims are meant to represent. As a result, similar regenerative language appears across food labels that reference substantially different production systems, scopes of change, and underlying assumptions about what regeneration means.
Food labels play a primary role in shaping shopper understanding of agricultural practices and ethical commitments that are otherwise opaque at the point of purchase. Claims associated with environmental sustainability or social good often function as signals of added value, influencing perceptions of quality, responsibility, and legitimacy, and are frequently associated with higher prices. This market appeal and price premium heighten the attractiveness of regenerative claims to brands and retailers, while simultaneously increasing the importance of clarity and comparability in what such claims communicate to shoppers. When regenerative language is used broadly without clear distinctions, consumers are left to interpret meaning from limited cues, increasing the likelihood of confusion rather than informed choice.
Recent analyses have noted the diversity and ambiguity of regenerative claims, often focusing narrowly on differences in agricultural practices or environmental outcomes. According to one paper reviewing the literature on consumer perception, “As consumers become increasingly aware of greenwashing practices, scepticism towards sustainability information and claims may rise” (Cook et al 2023). However, these analyses tend to remain at a general level and rarely examine how regenerative claims are communicated to consumers, nor how differences in scope shape consumer understanding. Moreover, existing work has not systematically compared regenerative claims across the full spectrum of approaches currently used in food marketing, particularly with respect to the social and economic values they articulate or omit. This analysis draws on publicly available descriptions of regenerative claims used on retail food products, including label language, seals, and associated explanatory materials directed at shoppers.
This article addresses these gaps by developing a four-type typology of regenerative claims used on retail food products. The typology is designed to capture differences in scope, ranging from minimal practice adjustments within existing agricultural systems to approaches that frame regeneration as a fundamentally social and economic project. The typology does not evaluate the desirability or effectiveness of different approaches to regenerative agriculture but instead distinguishes among them based on the scope of practices, values, and governance arrangements they explicitly articulate. By examining what each claim type includes, implies, and leaves unaddressed, the analysis clarifies why regenerative labels function as powerful value signals while providing uneven guidance to consumers about the nature and extent of change being claimed.
Footnote: Throughout this article, the term “shoppers” is used to refer specifically to individuals who encounter food labels and make purchasing decisions at the point of sale. This distinction is intentional, as food “consumers” may include household members—such as children, elders, or others—who consume food but do not directly participate in purchasing decisions or in the interpretation of labeling claims.
Methods and Analytical Approach
This analysis draws on publicly available descriptions of regenerative claims used on retail food products, including label language and marketing materials directed at consumers. Examples are paraphrased and associated with claim in order to focus on how regenerative claims communicate meaning to shoppers. We therefore do not assess the performance or intent of particular companies or brands that employ the claim in their marketing materials. The analysis examines how regenerative claims are structured in ways that plausibly shape interpretive cues available to shoppers, rather than measuring consumer responses or purchasing behavior directly.
To ensure transparency in how the typology was developed, the certification and standard‑setting programs whose regenerative claims were examined are listed in Supplementary Appendix A. The appendix provides paraphrased descriptions of each program’s stated regenerative criteria and their coding across the analytical dimensions of practices, outcomes, and governance. Certification names are included because they constitute the publicly presented regenerative frameworks from which claim language is derived.The appendix is version‑controlled and archived separately to document the evidentiary basis for the typology without conflating the analysis with evaluations of specific firms.
The analytical approach is comparative and interpretive. Regenerative claims were examined across two primary dimensions: first, the agricultural practices and outcomes they explicitly reference or imply, and second, the social, economic, and governance values they articulate or leave unaddressed. From this analysis, four regenerative claim types were developed as analytical archetypes. These types are not intended as exhaustive or mutually exclusive categories; in practice, individual claims may combine elements from multiple types or fall between them. Instead, the typology serves as a heuristic for clarifying differences in scope and meaning that are otherwise obscured by shared terminology.
Distinct from literature that describes regenerative agriculture in terms of a continuum of practices and social arrangements (e.g., Soloviev 2019), this article addresses a different problem: how diverse understandings of regeneration are condensed into consumer-facing claims on retail food products.
Typology of Regenerative Claims
Type 1: Practice-Limited Regenerative Claims Aligned with Legacy Systems
This category of regenerative claims emphasizes minimal modifications to existing cropping and livestock practices, often without requiring baseline measurement or ongoing evaluation of outcomes. Claims in this category typically reference incremental improvements, such as efficiency gains, refinements to livestock confinement feeding systems, reduced tillage, or selective soil management practices, while remaining fully compatible with prevailing industrial agricultural systems characterized by proprietary seed technologies, proprietary chemical and pharmaceutical inputs, and synthetic fertilizers. Highly concentrated control over access to aggregation, processing, and distribution into retail and wholesale markets is often reinforced. As such, these claims presume production models based on large-scale operations and concentrated ownership, and do not require changes to existing patterns of control within the overall food system.
Regeneration is framed primarily as technical optimization within the status quo. Meaningful changes to legacy practices are generally outside the scope of these claims, and their absence is rarely made explicit to consumers. For shoppers, this type of “regenerative” claim signals positive change but provides limited guidance about what is actually changing or how extensive those changes may be.
Type 1 has few required practices and no required measurement; all changes are optional, incremental, and fully compatible with industrial models.
Type 2: Practice-Enhanced but Input-Permissive Regenerative Claims
This category expands the scope of regeneration to include a defined set of agricultural practices commonly associated with improved soil health and ecosystem function. These practices often include the use of cover crops, maintaining living roots in the soil for much of the year, and reductions in the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers. However, these claims typically stop short of prohibiting synthetic inputs altogether, instead emphasizing reduction or optimization rather than elimination.
Type 2 claims also begin to incorporate livestock as a functional component of agricultural systems, particularly for nutrient cycling, residue management, and weed control. References to grazing or animal integration are common, but the conditions under which animals are raised are often left undefined. Terms such as “free range” and “access to pasture” may be used without specifying duration, feed sourcing, or stocking density. In practice, systems involving concentrated animal feeding operations may fall within the scope of these claims. Issues such as confinement conditions, use of antibiotics and growth hormones, and manure management are typically not addressed or measured.
Type 2 claims reference specific soil‑health or ecological practices that must occur — but synthetic inputs remain allowed. In this category, regeneration is framed largely in ecological terms at the field or farm level, with limited attention to animal welfare standards or to broader social and economic structures shaping agricultural production.
Type 3: Outcomes-Oriented and Standards-Based Regenerative Claims
This category shifts emphasis from prescriptive practice lists toward measurable environmental outcomes. Claims in this category often reference indicators such as soil carbon, soil organic matter, water infiltration, biodiversity metrics, or ecosystem services, and may incorporate baseline assessments and periodic measurement. Regeneration is framed as an outcome to be demonstrated rather than as a fixed set of required actions. Synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, and prophylactic pharmaceuticals are almost always prohibited under Type 3 claims.
While this approach introduces greater attention to monitoring and verification, the scope of outcomes measured is typically limited to biophysical indicators. Social, economic, and governance-related dimensions of regeneration—such as labor conditions, ownership, community participation, or value distribution—are generally outside the formal scope of these claims. Livestock systems may be included, but animal management practices and welfare standards are often addressed indirectly, if at all, through their effects on other measured environmental indicators.
Certified Organic as a Special Case
Certified organic systems represent a mature, legally defined, and enforcement-oriented subset of standards-based regenerative claims. Organic standards prohibit the use of synthetic pesticides and fertilizers, artificial hormones, sewage sludge (biosolids), genetic bioengineering of seeds and cultivars, and gene-edited animals, and are enforced through documentation, inspection, and third-party certification such as the USDA National Organic Program (USDA 2023).
Despite this relatively high level of governance, current statutory organic standards do not directly address several dimensions often associated with broader conceptions of regeneration. Livestock welfare requirements are limited in scope and do not explicitly exclude confinement-based systems such as CAFOs or dry lots provided other requirements are met. Organic standards also permit soilless hydroponic production, raising questions about the legal requirement for biologically active soil under the Organic Foods Production Act. Worker welfare, community governance, and local economic resilience are largely outside the formal scope of USDA certification.
Certified organic systems thus illustrate both the strengths and limitations of highly developed standards: they provide clarity and accountability in certain domains while leaving broader social and structural dimensions of regeneration unaddressed. USDA Organic is one of the few regenerative claims used in the United States that is managed by a government entity rather than an industry group.
Transitional “Wrap-Around” Organic Claims
As regenerative claims move from practice-based and outcome-centered approaches toward broader scopes, some standards have emerged explicitly to clarify meaning for consumers by layering additional requirements onto existing certifications. These “wrap-around” approaches use familiar labels, most notably USDA Organic, as a foundation for communicating expanded expectations, including additional banned or required practices, animal welfare, worker welfare, and community capacity-building. While such claims seek to improve consumer understanding by making exclusions more explicit, they remain bounded by prevailing socioeconomic structures and do not directly engage questions of capital concentration or control. As a result, they occupy an intermediate position between practice-forward and outcomes-focused regenerative claims and more expansive approaches to regeneration (Real Organic Project n.d.; Regenerative Organic Alliance n.d.).
Type 4: Socially Embedded and Governance-Oriented Regenerative Claims
This category departs fundamentally from primarily practice-forward and outcomes-focused approaches by framing regeneration as a question of social organization, governance, and collective responsibility. Claims in this category explicitly link agriculture to social justice, access to land and capital, fair and beneficial working conditions, access to markets, and community sovereignty over ownership, decision-making, and governance.
These claims are often articulated through principle-based frameworks associated with initiatives such as the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, IFOAM’s Organic 3.0 framework, and Regeneration International. While these frameworks vary in institutional form and degree of formal enforcement, they share an emphasis on decentralized authority, democratic participation, and community self-determination, while often constraining the use of bioengineering, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.
Importantly, the principles reflected in these claims are not presented as novel innovations or rediscoveries. Rather, they draw on longstanding ways of organizing relationships among people, land, livestock, and food that predate contemporary sustainability standards and certification regimes. Often described as Indigenous or place-based governance principles, these approaches emphasize quality of life, regeneration, resilience, reciprocity, relational accountability, collective stewardship, and interdependence (IFOAM 2026). These principles are not confined to the Global South or to any particular cultural or ethnic identity; similar governance logics are evident in peripheral rural communities and urban neighborhoods globally (see footnote).
These governance-oriented understandings of regeneration find their most explicit and historically grounded expression in agroecological movements, particularly those associated with agroecología and food sovereignty frameworks advanced by transnational farmer and peasant organizations such as La Vía Campesina. In these contexts, agroecology is not primarily a set of agronomic practices, but a political project embedded in land, labor, and community self-organization. Agriculture functions as one element within broader struggles over access, sovereignty, equity, and democratic control of food systems (FAO 2018).
Discussion
Taken together, the four regenerative claim types outlined in this article illustrate that contemporary uses of the term “regenerative” on retail food products do not reflect a single, shared understanding of what regeneration entails. Instead, regenerative claims span a wide range of scopes, from minimal modifications to existing production practices, through expanded practice sets and outcomes-oriented standards, to approaches that frame regeneration as a fundamentally social and economic project. While these claims frequently employ similar language at the point of purchase, they differ markedly in the practices they require, the dimensions they measure, and the values they explicitly articulate or leave unaddressed. For consumers, this convergence of terminology alongside divergence of meaning helps explain why regenerative labels often function as powerful value signals but do not provide consistent guidance about the nature or extent of the regenerative changes being claimed.
These differences in scope have important implications for how food labels function as sources of trust. Labels are commonly relied upon by shoppers as proxies for complex production processes and ethical commitments that cannot be directly observed at the point of purchase. When regenerative claims with fundamentally different meanings are presented using similar language and visual cues, consumers are asked to place trust in a term whose content varies substantially across contexts. This places a cognitive and interpretive burden on shoppers, who must either seek additional information beyond the label or accept ambiguity about what regeneration signifies in practice. Over time, such ambiguity risks weakening the credibility of regenerative claims as a whole, particularly if consumers come to associate the term with symbolic value rather than with discernible practices or outcomes.
Beyond questions of labeling and consumer trust, the variation among regenerative claim types reflects deeper disagreements about the governance of food systems and the role of values in shaping agricultural change. Attention to ownership, governance, and value distribution is included here not to assess corporate intent or performance, but to clarify which dimensions of regeneration are made visible—or rendered invisible—through different forms of labeling and standards. Narrower claims largely treat regeneration as compatible with existing arrangements of ownership and capital, relying on technical adjustments or performance metrics to signal improvement. In contrast, broader regenerative claims foreground participation, power, and value distribution, positioning agriculture as inseparable from social organization and political economy. The prominence of agroecological movements grounded in food sovereignty and collective governance further underscores that the most expansive interpretations of regeneration identified here are not speculative but are already practiced at scale in diverse social and geographic contexts.
Regenerative Claims, ESG/SDG Frameworks, and Value Signaling
The ambiguity surrounding regenerative claims is further reinforced by their frequent alignment with corporate sustainability reporting frameworks such as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Within the agri-food sector, research has documented how sustainability and ethical commitments are often communicated through selective indicators, symbolic narratives, and partial disclosures that signal responsibility without necessarily corresponding to systemic change (Montero-Navarro et al. 2021).
In this context, ESG and SDG references are commonly used to frame discrete projects or initiatives as evidence of broader organizational alignment, even when such projects address only a narrow subset of environmental or social concerns. When these references are deployed alongside regenerative claims, they can amplify the appearance of coherence and comprehensiveness while leaving the underlying scope of agricultural practices, governance arrangements, and value distribution unclear. Rather than clarifying regenerative meaning for shoppers, the layering of ESG and SDG language onto heterogeneous regenerative claims may further distance aspirational goals from the specific practices and values those claims are intended to convey.
Conclusion
This article has shown that regenerative claims used on retail food products encompass a wide range of meanings that extend well beyond a single set of agricultural practices. By developing a four-type typology, the analysis clarifies how regenerative language can signal anything from incremental technical adjustments within existing systems to broader ecological, social and economic visions of agriculture. The resulting overlap in terminology, combined with divergence in scope, helps explain why regenerative labels are both compelling and confusing to consumers.
Rather than treating this ambiguity as a failure of consumer understanding or as a problem that can be resolved through additional information alone, the analysis highlights how regenerative claims reflect competing assumptions about what kinds of change are necessary, desirable, or feasible within food systems. Making these distinctions explicit contributes to clearer interpretation of regenerative labels and to broader discussions about transparency, trust, and values in food systems.
Footnote
As used in this article, “legacy systems” refers to large‑scale, input‑intensive agricultural production models characterized by proprietary seed technologies, synthetic chemical and pharmaceutical inputs, concentrated ownership, and vertically integrated control over aggregation, processing, and distribution. “Technical optimization” denotes incremental efficiency improvements within these systems—such as adjustments to tillage, nutrient management, or animal housing—that do not alter underlying structures of ownership, input dependence, or market power. “Peripheral rural communities” refers to regions whose geographic or economic marginalization is marked by declining agrarian infrastructure, limited market access, and reduced local control over production and distribution decisions. These definitions are intended to clarify terminology rather than to prescribe normative judgments about any particular production model.
Note: Portions of this manuscript, including refinement for academic publication norms and structural suggestions, were developed with the assistance of AI‑based writing tools. All conceptual framing, analysis, and final text decisions were made by the authors, who take full responsibility for the content.
References
Cook, B.; Costa Leite, J.; Rayner, M.; Stoffel, S.; van Rijn, E.; Wollgast, J. Consumer Interaction with Sustainability Labelling on Food Products: A Narrative Literature Review. Nutrients 2023, 15, 3837. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu15173837
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). 2018. Agroecology Knowledge Hub. https://www.fao.org/agroecology/en/.
International Federation of Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) n.d. The Principles Organic Agriculture: Health, Ecology, Fairness, and Care. https://www.ifoam.bio/why-organic/shaping-agriculture/four-principles-organic Accessed January 2026.
Montero-Navarro, Antonio, Thais González-Torres, José-Luis Rodríguez-Sánchez, and Rocio Gallego-Losada. 2021. “A bibliometric analysis of greenwashing research: A closer look at agriculture, food industry and food retail.” British Food Journal 123 (13): 547–560. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-06-2021-0708
Regenerative Organic Alliance. n.d. Regenerative Organic Farming. https://regenorganic.org/why-regenerative-organic/. Accessed January 2026.
Real Organic Project. n.d. Real Organic Farming. https://realorganicproject.org/real-organic-farming/. Accessed January 2026.
Soloviev, Ethan. 2019. Levels of Regenerative Agriculture. https://ethansoloviev.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Levels-of-Regenerative-Agriculture.pdf.
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Marketing Service. 2023. National Organic Program. https://www.ams.usda.gov/about-ams/programs-offices/national-organic-program.
Supplementary Appendix A
Regenerative Claim Systems and Certification Programs Included in the Typology
Version 1.0 — February 2026
This PDF is fixed and will not be modified after publication.
Authors
Alan Lewis, et al.
on behalf of the IFOAM North America Working Group on Regenerative Label Claims
Archival Location
This appendix is permanently archived at:
http://www.ifoam.bio
in the IFOAM International Publications Repository.
A stable, version‑controlled link will be maintained to ensure long‑term accessibility.
Purpose of This Appendix
This appendix provides the evidentiary foundation for the regenerative claim typology presented in the accompanying article, “When ‘Regenerative’ Means Different Things: Food Labels and Consumer Understanding.” It lists the certification and standard‑setting programs examined in the analysis, along with paraphrased descriptions of each program’s stated regenerative criteria and the coding applied across the analytical dimensions of practices, outcomes, and governance.
No brand names or company‑specific uses of these certifications are included.
Disclaimer
Certification program names are included solely for descriptive and analytical purposes.
This appendix does not evaluate, rate, compare, or endorse any certification program, organizational entity, or standard.
All descriptions of program criteria are paraphrased to avoid reproducing proprietary language and to focus the analysis on structural patterns rather than on specific institutional formulations.
Suggested Citation
IFOAM North America Working Group on Regenerative Claims.
Supplementary Appendix A: Regenerative Claim Systems and Certification Programs Included in the Typology.
Version 1.0 (February 2026). IFOAM International Publications Repository, http://www.ifoam.bio.